Another consultation was now held, and the question was—what shall we do now? We were again, apparently, at the starting point of another long, enforced fast. Our path seemed hedged in. The prospect was, indeed, very gloomy. Our only reasonable hope for even the temporary prolongation of our lives was centered in our ever faithful, and always reliable old mule. We revolted at the idea of killing and eating him, but the last bit of the girth was gone. After canvassing the whole situation over and over, again and again, we finally, but most reluctantly decided to kill the mule, and preserve all the soft parts, even the skin with all of its old scars, and then gather in whatever else we could find, and stay here until spring, or until good fortune might afford us some means escape; till some Moses might come and lead us out of this wilderness, notwithstanding the fact that we had not borrowed any jewelry which we had failed to return.
There were signs of wolves in that vicinity, and it was decided that the mule be slain about ten paces distant and directly in front of one of the port-holes of the fort, with the idea that wolves might smell the blood and come there and subject themselves to being shot, and thereby afford us a chance to increase our stock of winter supplies in the form of wolf steak, or jerk. Accordingly the victim was lead to the spot indicated, and there slain in the same manner, and with quite as much reluctance on the part of the slayer, as on the occasion of the sacrifice of the little horse, more than three weeks before. The body was skinned, cut up, and all taken within the building, nothing being left except the blood which had been spilled on the ground, and which was intended to attract wolves or, possibly, bears or other animals.
My now only living associate ridiculed the idea of killing wolves, and insisted that the flesh could not be eaten, stating the fact that even hogs would not eat the dead body of a dog, and insisted that a dog was only a tamed wolf. I reminded him of a cat which had been eaten. He finally agreed that, if I killed a wolf, he would get up and dress it, but said most emphatically that he would not sit up and watch for it; so he went to bed, that is, rolled himself up in a blanket on the ground in front of a good fire inside of the fort, and went to sleep, while I sat with my rather untrustworthy double barreled shot-gun protruding through the port-hole in full view of the spot before indicated. The night was clear, and the moon was shining in full splendor. It was probably eleven o'clock; Field had been snoring for a long time, when I heard something in the tall, dry grass, and soon a large, brownish-gray wolf came into full view, with head up, apparently sniffing, or smelling, and cautiously approaching the fatal spot. When he reached it, and began to lick up the blood which was still on the surface of the ground, standing with his left side toward the fort, and in full view, I took deliberate aim, and fired, and he fell upon the ground without making any considerable noise.
The tired, sleeping man was aroused by the report of the gun, and rushed into the room where I was in great excitement, thinking, perhaps, that some enemy had appeared, and had just then commenced to bombard the fort; but when I explained to him that I had simply killed a wolf, he ran out towards it, and, arriving close to it, the wounded creature rose up on its hind feet and growled quite vigorously, which seemed to frighten Field as much as did the noise of the gun. He dashed back to the fort, and, after having time to recover from his speechless condition, abused me most fearfully for having told him that I had killed a wolf. I then went out and put a load of shot into the wolf's head, and found that my first charge had passed through and broke both of its fore legs near the body. Field was so thoroughly frightened that I could not induce him to approach the dead animal for some time, and I do believe that that wolf haunted him as long as I knew him, for he seemed never to forget it. After dressing it by the light of the moon assisted by a torch, we retired. On viewing the plump body next morning Field exclaimed, "That's another God-send!" and notwithstanding his opinion that wolf could not be eaten, he found that wolf to be the best food we had eaten since we had assisted Walker and his tribe in eating the mountain sheep.
The French may eat their horses, but I do not want more horse flesh. The old mule made fair but quite coarse beef. While out on this little pleasure(?) excursion we ate horse, mule, wolf, wild-cat, mountain sheep, rose seed buds, raw-hide, a squirrel, fatty matter from the sockets of the mule's eyes and the marrow from his bones; but that ham of wild-cat was certainly the most detestable thing that I ever undertook to eat. The marrow from the mule's bones was a real luxury.
We now had a pretty good stock of food, such as it was, but not enough to carry us through the winter on full rations; therefore we determined to try to add to it by hunting. One was to go out and hunt while the other would remain at home: we now had undisputed possession of the fort and it was our home. Field took the first day's outing while I occupied my time in drying and smoking meat. Late in the evening he returned, tired and worn out, having seen nothing worth shooting.
Next day came my turn to hunt. I took a lunch, as he had done, consisting of jerked mule. I did not tell him so, but I had determined to make an excursion up the river to a point where we had seen some fresh trails and deer tracks some days before. When I was putting up my lunch my friend intimated that I was taking a very large amount for one lunch, but I told him that I might stay out late and that I did not intend to starve. I went, stayed all day, all night, and part of the next day, and returned as he had done, tired and discouraged, not having seen anything worth bringing in. In the evening of the first day out I found a trail which appeared to have been used daily by deer going to and from the river.
It occurred to me that they might go out early in the morning, so I secreted myself within gun shot of the trail behind an old, moss-covered log where I slept comfortably; and when it was light enough in the morning to see a deer, I leveled my gun across the log in a position commanding the trail and waited and watched until nine o'clock, but nothing came upon that pathway that morning. After getting tired of watching and waiting I went down to the trail where, to my astonishment, I found the fresh tracks of a large bear which must have passed by that way while I was sleeping. As a rule I do not like to be treated discourteously, but in this instance I felt glad that this stranger had passed me by.
On arriving at the fort late in the evening I found my friend in a terrible state of mental excitement. He said that he had not slept a minute during the whole of the night before. He had filled the door of his room with rails, and sharpened one end of a long stick, which he intended to use if necessary as a weapon of defence. When I arrived he was again filling the door with rails. I had the gun, pistol and big knife with me so this was his only means of defence. He said he would not stay alone another night for all the gold in California.
I was much discouraged by our failures in hunting, and after a lengthy discussion we decided to make another attempt to cross the mountains and escape from what then seemed to us certain starvation. This was Thursday night and we set Monday as the time for starting. By Saturday night everything was in readiness for the start and Sunday we devoted to Bible reading, for we each still had a pocket Bible. As much of the flesh of the wolf and the lamented mule as we thought we could carry had been thoroughly jerked, and finding that we would not be overburdened by it, we economized by roasting and eating little scraps of flesh, the marrow from the bones, and even the head of the mule was roasted, the fragments of flesh scraped off and eaten, and Field found a rich fatty substance in behind the eyes, which he ate.